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I was looking for a partner and someone with whom to have a child. I advertised myself using posters in which I highlighted true qualities in myself that men online said they were looking for and I went on dates with anyone who contacted me.

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I am exploring ways in which we look to meet romantic partners in contemporary times. Examining ideas of dating (online etc.), celebrity, the marketing, branding and objectification of self that have become part of modern dating culture. How does our status impact our desirability and how do we transcend accepted fields of status and power created by existing in a meritocracy based on economics? I wonder how the status, (which is a deciding factor in who we choose as partners and who chooses us) is informed by different kinds of capital; physical beauty, education, humor, wit, intelligence, and forms other than economic.

 

The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status. Money, fame and influence may be valued more as tokens of-and means to-love rather than ends in themselves.

 Beyond financial assets, what is considered valuable, what capital do we each carry inherently? Physical attributes, cultural knowledge, intellect and education...what of kindness, honesty, compassion and other personal values?

By increasing my visibility in a culture obsessed with media, do I increase my chances to find true love and create a family? Do au courant methods of meeting people make us disposable; another product on a shelf with endless possibilities? How do I create a buzz around myself in such a way that I become a desirable life partner, someone with whom a man would want to raise a family? Are these fundamental desires or are we, as humans, differentiated from other species because we can and do override them?

Are wealth and power ends in themselves or do we hunger for them in order to be relished more by others...to feel loved?

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"Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed."

(Pierre Bordieu)